


Darkest part between us

by Yuu_chi



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon mental health issues, M/M, Slow Build, Unspecific mental health issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-04-22 13:05:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4836446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuu_chi/pseuds/Yuu_chi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he's young Josh meets another child in the wilderness of the family mountain. Chris is strange and Josh is lonely and together they build a friendship tucked into the few weeks of the year they can see each other. </p><p>But there's a danger on the mountain that Chris can't keep from Josh forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When Josh was too young to remember his father bought the family a mountain.

It was about as impressive as it sounded, but it took Josh a very long time to realize that, in fact, not everybody’s family owned a mountain. On that mountain they built a lodge and in that lodge Josh was raised. Not on a permanent basis but on an all-my-childhood-memories-seem-to-be-here basis.

However, they weren’t necessarily what Josh would call pleasant memories. A lodge on an isolated mountain across the border from home was a luxury wasted on a child too young to appreciate the solitude and born into the generation of technological gratification, of which there was very little on Blackwood Mountain.

Josh’s sisters fared better as they were quick to find entertainment in each other, as twins were wont to do, and his father and mother took the brief family getaways as a chance to try and glue back together the flaking mess that was their marriage.

Josh, however, had always been a lonely and restless child by nature and by the time the children were old enough to be taken to the lodge for more than a weekend at a time he was already sick of it all.

As were, apparently, his parents. They’d barely been there a week when the fights started up.

They seemed harmless at first – “ _that stranger cornered me at the cable-car yesterday, it’s really about time we reported him, don’t you think?” –_ but they grew quickly, turning to vicious nasty things that floated up the cabin stairs and into Josh’s room where he couldn’t hope to block them out.

_“– And Josh! You’re always saying you’ll spend more time with him, but you never do!”_

_“He’s old enough to have his own life, Melinda, I shouldn’t have to –.”_

_“– He’s eleven! Eleven! And you_ should _have to, that’s the point of parenthood!”_

_“You don’t get to lecture me on this –.”_

Josh crept quietly past the kitchen where the yelling had dissolved into sobbing and hushed talking and outside into the snow. He shut the door too loudly behind him, wincing at the way it shuddered at the doorframe, but his parents were too consumed in their argument to hear.

Outside was dark, but the moon was big and Josh let himself follow the path that snaked out and away from the lodge. He didn’t have a destination in mind, really, just the need to burn off the energy that was sizzling in his blood and the way his hands wouldn’t stop shaking for one reason or another.

In the snow, however, everything looked the same and Josh quickly found himself losing track of how far he’d come.

It was late and he was tired and although the moon was much too bright to really say it was dark, Josh could feel the blackness around him creeping in underneath his skin, whispering things in his ears and leaving him unsettled and jumpy.

He was starting to wonder if he might not have just hid in the twin’s room rather than let his brashness take him outside when he heard a soft sound, like something breaking underfoot.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Josh jumped, spinning around fast enough for his boot to catch on a root and send him stumbling backwards as he lost his footing. He cringed, preparing for the cold shock of snow on his bare arms and the wetness of it everywhere else only to instead feel warm hands at his elbows and hear a pained _oof_.

“You’re heavier than you look,” said the voice again and Josh craned his head back to see he’d been caught by a boy who looked no older than he was, blue eyed and blonde haired.

Josh gapped and the boy offered him an agonized look. “Do you think you could get back on your feet now?”

“Oh, sorry,” Josh said, and he hurriedly hauled himself back upright instead of precariously leaning on his heels with most of his weight pressed back on the other kid’s chest. He shook out his shoulders a little to ease off the nerves of his almost-fall and narrowed his eyes at the boy. “Who are you?” He asked suspiciously, and then added a belated, “and it’s _you_ who shouldn’t be here. I _own_ this mountain.”

The boy smiled at him, either missing Josh’s attitude or electing to ignore it. “I’m Chris,” he said, “and you’re Josh. So you don’t own this mountain, your father does.”

Josh stared at him. “How do you know that?”

Chris shrugged. “Everybody knows your father, don’t they?”

It was a very clever question dodge if ever there was one, because yes, everybody did quite know Bob Washington, Hollywood director and recent real estate mogul, but Josh hadn’t been asking about that. But before he could press further there came a sudden and harsh noise like the chatter of static.

“Sorry,” Chris said apologetically and Josh watched in bemusement as he reached into the pocket of his puffy coat and pulled out what looked like a heavy duty radio.

“What’s that?” He asked but Chris waved a hand to shush him as another wave of noise rushed through. This time Josh could hear a voice that had gone fuzzy in the snow and brewing storm but Chris seemed to understand the words well enough.

“Received,” he said, one thumb holding down a button. Looking at Josh while he spoke he added, “I just need to escort one of the Washington kids back to the lodge. Over.”

Josh stayed silent for a second while the radio crackled, but when Chris put it back in his pocket he indignantly said, “I’m not a  _kid_. I bet I’m older than you.”

Chris wrinkled his nose at him. “That’s not what I meant. And I’m _ten_.”

“Well,” Josh drawled with a smirk, “I’m _eleven_ , so you’re in no position to be bossing me around.”

“I’m not bossing you around!” Chris said. “You just need to go back to the lodge. You shouldn’t be here right now. It’s dangerous.”

“Why?” Josh scoffed. “Because it’s dark? Don’t be such a baby.”

In truth, Josh himself was rather afraid of the dark but at the moment he was less afraid of it than he was of going back to the lodge where voices were raised and the remnants of their dinner plates were still laying smashed on the kitchen flooring. Still, Chris didn’t need to know that. Any of it, really.

“No,” Chris said patiently, “because of other reasons.”

“Other reasons?” Joshed pressed, but his voice was drowned out in a particularly loud wail of wind that left him shuddering, bundling in on himself automatically.

“Are you cold?” Chris said, and it was only because Josh was an expert question dodger himself that he picked up on the tact with which Chris had once again sidestepped his question. “Here, take this.”

“What?” Josh asked and then belatedly realized that Chris was unzipping his coat, shrugging his arms out of the fluffy green sleeves. “I can’t take your coat!”

Chris looked up in surprise. “Why not? I have more.” He slid out of it and offered it to Josh and Josh saw that yeah, he actually did. Now that he was paying attention Josh realized Chris was wearing more layers than your average wedding cake.

“I’ll make sure to give it back to you,” Josh said as he reluctantly reached out to take it.

Chris offered him a delightfully toothy grin. “I’d hope so,” he said. “This one is my favourite.”

The coat was warm and insulated and almost at once Josh felt his chills easing off. As they did he became aware of how sore he was, right down to the very bones, from all the shaking; both from the cold and the anxiety that had driven him out into the dark to begin with. He was tired, too. So, so tired.

“Wow,” Chris said. “You look exhausted. Come on; let me take you back to the lodge, yeah?”

“I guess,” Josh said uncertainty. “I can get back on my own though.”

Chris shook his head. “Let me take you,” he said, this time more firm than the last.

Josh supposed there wasn’t any particular reason not to, really. Besides, he was curious. This was private property and there shouldn’t have been anybody around for miles upon miles; yet here was this kid his own age suited up like a commando and acting like his own personal escort.

“Lead the way, Cochise,” he shrugged.

“Cochise?” Chris said as he fell into step beside him, and Josh couldn’t help but notice that while his own footsteps crunched loudly in the snow Chris’s were softer, quieter, and fell into the gaps between the whispers of tree leaves.

Josh grinned at him. “It suits you.”

Chris looked positively delighted.

.

Josh didn’t tell his parents about Chris. Part of it was out of the fear that if he did Chris would get in trouble – he still remembered so clearly the whispered conversations about the stranger who should not have been on their mountain– but part of it was also out of… something like possessiveness, he supposed.

Chris was an anomaly, a strangeness that had happened to Josh and only Josh. If he didn’t say anything his family would never know. Nobody would. He could keep the exciting mountain boy he’d found in the snow all to himself.

It was almost like having a friend and Josh, who had never had a friend before, felt almost embarrassed to think about Chris like that. Was that something he should have asked? Did he need permission for that? What did it take, exactly, to become ‘friends’?

It was thoughts like that that stuck with him when he went to bed at night, staring thoughtfully at Chris’s snow jacket that was hung carefully on the hook at the back of his bedroom door.

For the rest of their stay at the lodge he spent a lot of time outside on his own. His parents were so consumed in their own matters and argument that they did not notice and his sisters, who had always sought company with each other, did not care.

Josh had always been a strange sort of child, given to fits of isolation even as he feared loneliness. He was too young to understand the concept of self-sabotage, but his personality was already forming itself dangerously close to that ideal.

All the same Chris did not show up again. Josh trekked back to where they first met and spent hours sitting on a damp log amongst the snow. He went out in the morning and the afternoon and the evening. He tried once, even, going back at night but he’d found without the hot anger to carry him his terror of the dark just drove him back inside.

By the time they packed up and headed home a month later he had not seen Chris again and had taken to sleeping with the jacket by his bed to remind himself that it was not a dream.

(and although he did not say it – to others or himself – Josh was already beginning to wonder if perhaps he _was_ a dream after all.)

.

Going back to school was hard. It’d always been, after all, something of a difficult thing for Josh.

He liked learning, really, but his attention span tended to waver and as time went on so did his moods. Some days it was easier to be in the classroom and focus on the teacher, but other days it was an impossibility.

He got in trouble a lot. Nothing serious, just _Mr and Mrs Washington, Josh refused to answer a question when asked, Josh refused to leave the classroom for lunch, Josh doesn’t work well in groups, play well with the other children – why, Mr and Mrs Washington, does your son who seems so bright and friendly turn everything around him sour so quick?_

After a while Josh learnt to hide it. To cram his moods under the tightness in his skin and the stiffness in his knuckles that came from clenching his hands too hard. He learnt that people did not like him when he was _him_ ; that in order for the other kids to approach and for the teachers to care he had to shut away all the things that were Josh Washington in a little box and hope for the best.

However, when he went back to school after meeting Chris, Josh had a new goal.

He wanted _friends_. Not passable acquaintances that could stand to be around him so long as he worked to keep his moods in check, but people he could talk with, laugh with; have some sort of connection to.

Chris had introduced the idea of friendship to him, however transient it’d been, and Josh was starting to wonder if maybe it was worth all the effort people put into it. In any event, he was willing to try.

He went to school bundled up in Chris’s coat for strength and made an effort to talk to the students next to him, laughed at their jokes even if he did not find them funny, learnt to tell his own.

Mike was the boy who sat to his left and Sam the girl two seats back who’d always seemed friendly if intimidating. They took to each other like it was natural, and sometimes Josh found himself uncomfortable, still, with the constant ramble that was conversation, but it was also exciting to smile at someone and have them genuinely smile back.

 _Had it always been this easy?_ Josh couldn’t help wonder but he was trying to work around his own self-doubt.

Still, he thought of Chris often and when the weather changed and he had to put the jacket away he did it with great reluctance and the hope that the next time he took it out he’d be able to return it to him in person.

.

(at eleven-and-a-half Josh had his first panic attack.

With his father gone on a shooting and his mother locked in her room with a bottle of wine and his sisters only concerned with each other there was nobody to notice.)

.

Next break they went back to Blackwood Mountain again and Josh was ecstatic.

“I didn’t realize you liked the lodge so much,” Hannah said in surprise when she came to his room to see him carefully and methodically packing his belongings.

Josh shrugged and reached for Chris’s coat. Beth, who was never far behind her sister, frowned.

“Haven’t you had that thing since last year?”

Josh bristled. “It still fits,” he protested which, although not the reason he was packing it, was still the truth because Josh had developed an alarming dependency on it over the past eight months.

Beth smirked at him. “Probably because you’re so small for your age. Tell me, brother, when was the last time you had a growth spurt?”

Josh did not rise to the bait, still too excited at the prospect of finally seeing Chris again to start a fight. Still, Beth’s words niggled at him. He wondered if Chris had a growth-spurt. Would he still want the jacket back if he had?

What if, Josh thought, Chris was taller than him now? The idea sent a weird sort of thrill through him.

“Wow,” Hannah said, “you must really want to go on this trip. You look positively blissed out.”

“Shut up, I do not,” Josh sniffed as he slammed his suitcase shut and worked at zipping it closed.

He told himself it wasn’t the truth, that there was no way he was that desperate, but the hot simmer in his blood did not lie.  

.

Josh didn’t rush outside but it was honestly a near thing. He didn’t wear Chris’s jacket either because he did not wish to seem desperate but he made sure that it was obvious in the way it was tucked at the crook of his arm, and although he swaggered out into the mountain there was eagerness in his step that he could not erase.

Part of him was sure that it was going to go just like the first trip; Josh desperately waiting and waiting for a boy who did not come. He’s aware, at some level, that there was something a little abnormal with the dedication to which he had latched himself to Chris, but for all he’d only seen him once Chris was the first child to show him kindness, the first to smile at Josh like his company was a delight rather than a pain.

Josh was the kind of child that clung to battered toys and glued covers back onto his ratty childhood books. He was not in the habit of forgetting neither firsts nor feelings he’d been given, and Chris was both of those.

This time Josh had a Plan. He did not go back to their first meeting spot but instead headed out past the immediate lodge property towards where his parents had very firmly told him to never go; towards the sanatorium that’d been empty for as long as it’d been full.

The thing with Josh was that nobody expected him to be as sharp as he was. He was finicky and jumpy to be sure, but when his mind allowed him to focus everything came into crystal clarity. He was excellent at research when he wanted to be, and in between the last time they’d been to the mountain and now he’d done his fair sure of just that.

The sanatorium was an unstable and gloomy place; a history fraught with mystery and darkness that had left even the most completed records lacking. It’d been the grey spot in his parent’s considerations in buying the mountain, and Josh had flicked through their records enough to know that they’d seriously debated demolishing it at one point or another.

Josh figured it was at best a disagreeable place and at worst downright dangerous.

 _You shouldn’t be out, it’s dangerous_ Chris had said that night when he’d found Josh out in the woods in the darkness. If it was the danger that had brought them together, than all Josh needed to do was recreate it, right?

Surely it would have been simpler to stay out in the dark once more, but the simple had never truly agreed with him. Josh’s fear of the dark was as consuming as it was embarrassing. He’d managed that night when he was off kilter and guided by the moon, but it’d been sudden and reckless. Given the time to talk himself out of it Josh absolutely would.

So. The sanatorium.

Josh crunched his way through the snow, delighting in the sound of it and surprised by how much he’d missed it. He kept his eyes to the path ahead of him like he was unconcerned, just out for a stroll, certain that if Chris wanted to be seen he would be.

 _This is fine_ , Josh thought as his heart beat much too loudly in his ears. _This will work, this will work, this will –_

And sure enough: “ _Where the hell do you think you’re going_?”

Josh looked at the ground for a second just to smother out the grin that he couldn’t stop from growing and then casually to his left where Chris was noisily fighting his way through the off-trail foliage and to the path.

“I’m just out for a walk,” he lied blatantly, “and considering this is my property that’s perfectly legal, right?”

“Your _father’s_ property,” Chris corrected again, grunting as he batted a branch out of his eyes and finally lumbered to Josh’s side. “And don’t you know the old sanatorium is this way?”

“Yes,” Josh said without blinking, and then, “and you’re pretty clumsy today. Last time I saw you, you were, you know, super graceful and stuff.”

“Yeah, well, maybe if I wasn’t having to chase after you I wouldn’t have to be so clumsy,” Chris snapped, and Josh was surprised by how genuinely annoyed he sounded. “My job isn’t to come rescue you every time you go off the trail.”

“I’m still on the trail,” Josh said awkwardly.

Chris frowned at him. “You know what I mean. Off on your own, somewhere dangerous. Don’t you have a sense of self-preservation?”

Josh was beginning to feel legitimately guilty now, and it was a hot unpleasant feeling that settled in his stomach. It was being reminded that people did not like Josh Washington and he’d do well to remember that. That although he’d spent the past eight months fantasizing about meeting Chris again Chris probably hadn’t thought of him once.

“Sorry,” Josh said lamely. “I’m – yeah. Sorry.”

He couldn’t see Chris’s face because he was staring at a spot just up beyond his shoulder now but the moment weighed heavily between them. And then it was broken by the sound of Chris’s sigh; not the grown-up kind of sigh that would have gone with his grown-up concerns, but the sigh of an eleven year old child again, big and gusty and over emphasized in all the wrong places.

“S’okay,” he said. “You don’t have to – you know, cry over it.”

“I’m not crying!” Josh snapped, and he wasn’t, but it was a near thing. He finally managed to look Chris right in the eye for the first time and he blinked, taken aback, and without thinking said, “you got glasses.”

Chris, who indeed was wearing a pair of thin and spindly frames that looked decidedly battered for something so new, went bright red. “Shut up! It’s not like I could help it!”

“No, not like that,” Josh rushed to say. “I mean, they look, you know – cute.”

Chris stared at him, one hand up to hold the sides of the frames like he’d been debating tearing them off and hiding them in his pockets. “Cute?” He repeated.

Josh shrugged. “Well, handsome. I don’t know. Whatever you want them to be called.”

He expected Chris to maybe take offense to that too – Josh had recently been starting to learn that boys had a thing against being complimented by other boys – but instead Chris just looked sheepish and maybe a tad more relaxed about the shoulders.

“You think?” He asked, and it was almost shy.

Josh smiled at him. “Do you think I’d lie to you, Cochise?”

He was unsure how Chris would respond to the old nickname, but instead his face broke out in a positively radiant grin that left Josh surprisingly woozy for the sheer power behind it.

“Oh man,” Chris said wistfully, “it feels so surreal to hear that again.”

It was the closest thing to an invitation Josh was going to get so he took the chance to take a deep breath and hold out Chris’s jacket to him.

Chris stared.

“It’s yours,” Josh said unnecessarily. “You know, from last time.”

Chris’s gaze flicked from the jacket up to Josh.

“You said you wanted it back,” Josh said defensively, trying his hardest not to look as stupid as he felt.

“I know,” Chris hastened to say as he finally reached out to take it. His hand hung limply in the air for a second before he made the choice to pull it back on in jerky movements, obviously thinking nothing of bundling up again with what looked like easily his forth layer. “I was just… surprised?”

“Did you think I was going to keep it?” Josh scoffed, folding his arms over his chest like it could keep him from feeling the nervous adrenaline that was quickly making him twitchy. “ _Please_ , as you’re so fond of reminding me, my _father_ owns a mountain.”

This time Chris broke out into that sunny grin that Josh had so missed. “I didn’t think you’d remember,” he confessed. “It was a while ago.” He paused, bit at his lip a little and glanced up at Josh, looking as nervous as Josh felt. “I didn’t think you’d remember _me_.”

For a moment Josh was floored. Surely that should be him saying that; it was Chris, after all, who hadn’t shown up again until Josh threatened to march himself out into the blackest parts of the forest. Surely it should be _him_ , who had been completely unable to forget the blue eyed boy before him.

“Well,” he said, and he worked at sounding breezier than he felt like he’d ever be again, “it’s been hard, I’ll admit. Would have been easier if I’d seen you again after that night.”

This time it was Chris who looked guilty, skittish in the way his gaze strayed to the side. Josh’s stomach plummeted instantly as his worst suspicion was confirmed. “You were avoiding me,” he said.

“No!” Chris said, and then he hesitated. “Well, yes. But also _no_.”

“It’s either one or the other,” Josh snapped, and he was too young to have the vocabulary to truly express how hurt he was so he instead settled for kicking the snow at his feet as violently as he dared. “If you didn’t want to see me again you could have just _said_.”

“That’s not it,” Chris said and he took a step forward, settling a hand on Josh’s shoulder to hold him steady. “That’s not it at all.”

“Well, what is it then, Cochise?”

“It’s – well, it’s my dad.”

“Your dad?” Josh repeated, baffled, but the tension was draining out of him fast, like Chris was sapping it from where they touched.

“He didn’t want me to see you again. He said…” Chris wrinkled his nose. “Well, basically he said some things about you and your family and me and my family, but he didn’t want me talking to you again.”

“That’s dumb,” Josh said.

“Yeah,” Chris sighed. “But he’s my dad, you know?”

Josh did know. His own father was home rarely but when he said something Josh’s whole being ached to listen, to do what he said, to not disappoint. He was aware that other children liked to rebel when they were his age, but Josh mostly wanted to keep whatever peace was left in the family for as long as he could.

“So,” he said, and the word was surprisingly hard to get out for all of the two letters it contained. “Does this mean you’re going to avoid me again?”

Chris looked torn for a second. “I ought to, probably.”

“But?” Josh said hopefully.

Chris smiled at him, fingers squeezing Josh’s shoulders in a way that sent warmth spinning hot down inside him. “But I think it’s a little late for that, don’t you?”

 


	2. Chapter 2

In the space of a few days Chris quickly becomes the most important person in Josh’s life.

He loved his parents, and he loved his sisters, and, even to an extent, Mike and Sam, but they can’t compare to what he feels for Chris. Not in the depth of the feelings, because that’s not how relationships were made to be measured, but in the newness of them, the impossibility that had become a reality.

Chris was his best friend and Josh had never felt so comfortable and accepted around a human being in his whole life. It was… it was _fun_. It wasn’t exhausting like being with Mike and Sam tended to be once it went on for too long, but natural and organic and something Josh didn’t even know he was allowed to experience.

They spent most of their time outside, of course. Josh could hardly introduce Chris to his parents when he couldn’t explain how he’d come to meet him and Chris didn’t seem to be in any hurry to take Josh back to wherever it was he lived either.

That was fine though. It was less fine that sometimes Josh would wait and wait and Chris would not come, but Chris was always apologetic afterwards – _my dad needed me to help around the house, my dad was getting suspicious about me vanishing, I’m real sorry but I’ll let you know next time, yeah_?

There was a part of Josh that wondered sometimes on Chris’s inability to share with him even the sparest of details about what it was like for him at home, but most of Josh was just overwhelmed with how good it felt to be around him and Josh was already at the point of never doing anything to jeopardize that.

He, however, told Chris everything. He told him about his parents and the way they fought and his sisters and the way they shared a bond with each other that they never would with Josh. He told him about Sam and Mike and the other kids at school who were friendly now that Josh had learnt when and where to smile.

He told him, even, about the way he sometimes felt like his brain wasn’t wired quite the same as everybody else’s.

“I get sad sometimes,” he told him one day as the afternoon gave into evening and the two of them were huddled up for warmth in the old generator shed. “I just… feel weird, I guess.”

“I get like that sometimes too,” Chris said and Josh couldn’t help but smile thinly at him.

“No,” he said, “not like that.”

With anybody else he would have left it at that but Chris was not anybody else and Josh felt like if there was anybody who would understand it would be him. “It’s… It’s like there too much _outside_ and not enough _inside_ ,” he said. “Or maybe the opposite. It’s hard to explain. Everything’s sort of … like my brain is this city and the fog’s rolled in.”

“Wow,” Chris said with a straight face. “So poetic, dude.”

“Shut up,” Josh huffed, shoving him so that Chris laughed but a moment later he sobered.

“I can’t say I really get you but it doesn’t sound like a good time.”

“It’s not,” Josh said, more serious than he’d been in a while. “It’s really, really not.”

Chris wasn’t looking at him, staring instead down at where their knees knocked together. “You know you can tell me anything, right?” He said. “I know with you – you know, living in America and all, it’s not like I get to be with you much, but seriously, anything you need, I’m here.”

Josh felt such a rush of affection that he didn’t think he could have put it into words if he tried. “I know,” he said and then, slightly more self-consciously, “and you know you’re my best friend, right?”

Chris looked up then and his face crinkled into the most amazing smile Josh had ever seen. “I am?”

“Of course you are dude, who else would it be?”

Chris flushed and looked down again but he couldn’t hide his grin. He shrugged. “I don’t know, I mean, you have so many friends back home.”

“ _Dude_ ,” Josh said, and he was kind of flattered but mostly disbelieving, “I have two, if that. And you were here first. Do you think I tell Sam and Mike half the things I tell you?”

“I guess not.”

Josh shouldered him again. “You _know_ not. Have some faith in me.”

Chris laughed, and it was a low delightful sound that warmed Josh right to his bones. There was something absolutely delicious about making Chris laugh like that, and it gave Josh a feeling like he’d had too much sugar in one go.

“Alright,” Chris said. “Then you should know you’re my best friend too.”

Josh preened. “Of course I am.”

“Don’t let it go to your head though,” Chris drawled. “It’s not like I get out much so you don’t have a whole lot of competition.”

Josh rolled his eyes and thought for a moment about asking Chris exactly what he meant. Where did he live? Where did he go when he wasn’t there with Josh? What was it like for him at home? At school? Did he even _go_ to school? Did he just live on the mountain year round?

He had so many questions for him but Josh could never seem to force them out. He was sure if Chris wasn’t telling him things there was a reason for it and more than that Josh couldn’t bring himself to push. He didn’t want to overstep whatever it was Chris offered him. Friendship for Josh was still a fragile, tentative thing and although he was starting to get a better handle on it he couldn’t quite make himself believe that one wrong word wouldn’t bring the whole thing crashing down.

So in the meantime he kept all his questions bottled up inside and contented himself with the warm press of Chris by his shoulder, promising himself that he’d never, ever give him a reason to leave him.

.

Eventually the vacation comes to an end and Josh very nearly cries when he has to tell Chris.

“But, like, you’ll be back soon, right?” Chris asked, and they were too old to be holding hands like they were but that didn’t stop either of them. “It’s not like _goodbye_ goodbye.”

“Yeah,” Josh said, and it felt like a lie even though it wasn’t. His fingers trembled against Chris’s. The idea of going back some place without Chris to follow was already making him sick to his stomach. “I’ll talk my parents into coming back next break, even if it’s only for a few days.”

Chris offered Josh a shy smile and Josh smiled back. “You’re not going to avoid me again next time though, are you?” He couldn’t help but add and Chris punched him the shoulder for it.

“Dude, _let it go_ ,” he said and he tried to smile but he looked about as miserable as Josh felt.

“Soon,” he promised, and he squeezed their fingers together tight enough to hurt. “I’ll be back soon, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Chris said. “Soon. Just don’t go forgetting about me, okay?”

Josh scoffed and finally gave into the impulse to let go of Chris’s hand and just wrap his arms around his shoulders, burying his face into the fluff of his jacket. Chris didn’t even hesitate to hug him back and they stand like that wrapped up in too many layers and each other with snow settling on their shoulders.

“You’re the least forgettable part of my life,” Josh mumbled and Chris hugged him tighter, hands so warm at Josh’s back.

When Josh left the next morning he carried that warmth with him, bundled up beneath his coats where he could keep it safe.

.

Life goes on for Josh; sometimes with Chris and sometimes without. He took to being on his best behavior as often as possible if only because his parents would sometimes take him to the cabin as a reward. He didn’t explain to neither them nor his sisters why he’d taken to the mountain so suddenly but his family, for all that it was fractured and faulty, loved him and were desperately happy to see him take an interest in something.

He goes every time he has more than a few days off from school. His sisters don’t always come and his parents sometimes trade off on Josh duty, but he gets to see Chris once every few months, even if only for days at a time. It’s not enough, not at all. Chris is his best, dearest friend and he’s known him for nearly two years at this point and seen him possibly all of five times.

Still, Josh made himself be content with that, holding out desperately for school to break so their time together didn’t feel like it was hooked to a countdown.

Eventually though Sam and Mike clue in on what his family had not; that there was something a little suspicious about Josh and his relationship with Blackwood mountain.

“You’re never free,” Sam said one afternoon as she and Mike came over the day before he’s due to head off to the lodge for a long weekend, sitting on his bed sullenly and watching him pack with unreadable eyes. She didn’t sound angry exactly, a tad resentful maybe, but there was a concern there that was clear as day.

“That’s not true,” Josh protested even as he shoved a few rumpled shirts into his bag. “I’m with you guys pretty much every day, aren’t I?”

Sam frowned at him, pulling her legs up onto the bed and wrapping her arms around them. “That’s for school, Josh.”

Josh glanced towards where Mike was sitting beside him at his desk for support. Suddenly Mike became fixated on the framed family portrait in front of him that Josh knew was not nearly that interesting. Grimacing, he turned back to Sam and said, “I’m with you _right now_. I’m with you every other weekend.”

“You’re never here for holidays,” Sam insisted, and Josh was trying his hardest to seem unsuspicious because the moment Sam got her claws into a topic it was very difficult to shake her off. It was a habit, actually, that had been rubbing off a little on Hannah lately, and Josh had been starting to wonder if introducing his friends to his sisters had been a good idea.

Either way, he turned to shoot her the most pacifying smile he could over his shoulder. “Why does that matter? Do you miss me?”

The gaze Sam fixed on him was positively acidic. “Yes,” she said, in her no-bullshit tone that immediately filled Josh with irrepressible guilt. “As a matter of fact, we do.”

“Hey,” Mike said, holding his hands up. “Don’t drag me into this.”

“Oh, don’t try and act cool,” Sam snapped. “You’re always saying stuff like _if Josh were here he’d never make me do this_.”

“That’s because it’s true,” Mike said stubbornly. “Josh would never drag me out to a cliff and suggest we climb it for fun. That’s how people die, Sam. I’m thirteen; I’m too young to become part of the circle of life.”

Sam rolled her eyes and looked back at Josh. “Well?”

Josh stuffed a bunched up handful of boxers in his bag. “It’s true,” he confirmed. “I’d never make Mike do that.”

“ _Josh_ ,” she said again, with much more feeling.

Josh sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Maybe I just like it up there? Did you ever think of that? It’s peaceful.”

None of those things were a lie either, technically speaking. Josh did like it up there and it was peaceful. The fact that the prior statements were only true due to an influencing factor didn’t need to be mentioned.

Sam did not look convinced. “You’re so _secretive_ though,” she said earnestly.

It was the tone his parents used when they would say _just let us help you Josh_ and it rankled him something fierce even though he knew that wasn’t Sam’s intention, that Sam didn’t _know_ , that nobody but Chris, really, knew about the things that went on up in Josh’s head.

“Can you just let it go?” He said, and he couldn’t entirely hold back on the frustration inside him. It leaked in at the edges and made Mike glance up sharply, alert all of a sudden to the fact that the conversation was taking a turn for the worst.

“No,” Sam said stubbornly, and god help them all, Josh loved her but she was a total mother hen when it came to her friends. “No, I can’t let it go because it’s _strange_ and you must thing I’m pretty stupid if you honestly believe I don’t see it.”

Josh stared at her and she stared back. Behind them Mike cleared his throat.

“Dude,” he said. “She’s got a point. There’s really no reason for you to be this… evasive.”

Josh closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in deeply. He flexed his jaw a little, tried to work out the edgy annoyance that was working its way beneath his skin.

The truth was that no, there probably was not any reason for him to be this evasive. That Sam and Mike were right. But at this point hiding Chris had become such a conditioned thing for Josh that it was difficult to fathom the possibility of sharing him. He still worried that he’d get Chris in trouble, that if he told he’d be taken from him.

But it was also that part of him was still eleven years old inside and couldn’t bring himself to share the most important thing he had.

“Josh?” Sam prompted softly and Josh opened his eyes.

“Alright,” he said. “Okay, fine. You want to know? It’s nowhere near as exciting as whatever you’re imagining, I can tell you. _But_ ,” he paused, fixing both of them with a sweeping look, “this stays between us. This is a _secret_.”

“Have some faith in us, man,” Mike said, offended.

Josh leant back on his desk, playing idly with the zip to his weekend bag for something to do with his hands. “It’s… my friend lives there.”

“Where?” Sam asked.

“On the mountain.” Josh hesitated. “At least I _think_ he lives on the mountain.”

“He lives on the mountain?” Mike repeated, baffled.

“I just said that I _think_ he does. He’s never, you know, really specified.” Mike and Sam stared at him a little and Josh tried his hardest not to get defensive. “He’s a really good friend and going to the mountain is my only chance to see him.”

Mike and Sam exchanged looks. Mike shrugged, seemingly convinced.

That was the advantage of youth of course, because given another few years Josh’s explanation would have surely fell flat, but all three of them were still just right on the cusp of childhood; old enough for the attitude but young enough also for the easy belief that came before it. At thirteen they didn’t need the details, just like Josh hadn’t quite yet worked out all the things he needed to ask Chris, and a friend’s word was as good as gold.

“Why didn’t you just say that to begin with?” Sam asked. “Instead of leaving us worried about you for _months_?”

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” Josh said, which was at least the truth. “I didn’t – I didn’t think you’d notice.” Because there was a part of Josh that, even now, was completely blown away that Mike and Sam cared enough to pick up all the little details that even his family had not; could barely conceive that they wanted to spend time with him enough to miss him when he was gone. “And,” he added in a rush, “I told you, it’s a secret.”

“Why?” Mike asked curiously, idly spinning a stress ball Josh’s parents had uncleverly left on his desk between his palms, never able to resist the ability to touch the things around him.

“The mountain’s private property,” Josh explained.

Mike snorted. “Yeah, _your_ private property.”

“My _father’s_ ,” Josh corrected and experienced a weird sense of déjà vu. “My parents don’t like strangers on it. They don’t exactly know about Chris. I don’t want to get him in trouble.”

“Chris?” Sam perked up. “That’s his name?”

There was absolutely no reason for Josh to be embarrassed, but he suddenly, inexplicably was. There was a heat at the back of his neck and it was very hard to lock eyes with anybody in the room. “Well, yeah.”

“And he’s cool?” Mike asked, because of course that’d be the way he’d choose to word it.

“The coolest,” Josh said. “And no, before you ask, I can’t introduce you because I just told you he lives on my mountain.”

“Your _father’s_ mountain,” Mike corrected innocently and Josh decided that yeah, the next time somebody said that to him would be the last.

.

His mother took him to the lodge the next day and Josh didn’t waste any time dumping his bag in his room and racing out into the constant snow.

Chris never knew when to expect him exactly, it wasn’t like Josh could get in contact with him to pass along dates, but all the same it never took them long to find their way to each other. Well, Chris to find Josh at any rate. He was almost frightening in his silence and stealth. He didn’t always show up immediately – off doing whatever it was he did when Josh was not there to bear witness – but given enough time he’d come. Josh rarely had to wait a day.

For the time being Josh amused himself lumping snow together out near the generator shed, which was among their favourite places to meet. He didn’t have a goal in mind, but it was a pleasant distraction if anything, something to still the fidgets in his fingers.

Josh had been even more fidgety lately; jumpy and sometimes paranoid when he knew he had no reason to be. There was a part of him that recognized his moods were getting more and more erratic as time went by, but most of Josh was steadfastly ignoring it the way he did with everything in his life that required a confrontation.

He bent down to scoop up a handful of snow, putting himself low at ground level, and as he did he noticed for the first time something scratched into the siding of the generator shed. He let the snow fall through his fingers and reached out to brush the twigs and bramble blocking it out of the way.

It was larger than he’d originally thought, something deliberately carved with a knife time and time again, over older marks as they faded, even. It was hard to tell what it was; not quite a rune and not quite a word but something in between.

Slowly, Josh reached out to touch it, grazing the fingertips of his gloves along the gouges.

It was nothing more than knife marks in woodwork but just looking at it, touching it, felt… not _wrong,_ exactly, but perhaps unsettling. Like he was trespassing on something that wasn’t meant for him nor anybody like him.

Something heavy fell suddenly on Josh’s shoulder and he jumped, swearing every terrible, creative word he knew as he spun around on unsteady knees.

“Woah,” Chris said, lifting his hand off of Josh’s shoulder and holding both of them up between them. “It’s just me; I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Josh stared at him blankly and tried desperately to catch his breath as his heart worked itself back down to a reasonable pace.

It’d only been about three months since he’d seen Chris last but it felt like an age – _seemed_ like an age in the small differences that stood out like black on white. The way Chris’s glasses were different; thicker, sturdier frames. They made his eyes seem bluer somehow, but Josh knew that was completely in his head. He’d grown too; not enough to be called a spurt but enough to tug him that little bit higher than Josh.

But what really stood out in that moment was the swath of bandage on his forehead, tucked just beneath his hair, small enough to obviously not be life threatening but large enough to be worrying.

Josh was to his feet in a second, pushing Chris’s hair out of the way. Chris allowed it with a sigh and good humour.

“What happened?” Josh demanded. “Are you alright?”

Chris rolled his eyes and pulled Josh’s hands off of his face. “You see, if you’d let me talk first, I’d have been able to tell you that I’m fine. It’s just a scratch.”

“A scratch?” Josh repeated dubiously.

“Yes,” Chris said patiently. “A scratch.”

“A scratch from _what_ , exactly?”

Chris hesitated. “A tree branch?”

“Are you asking me or telling me, dude?”

“A tree branch,” Chris said again, more firm this time. “Definitely a tree branch.”

Josh stared at him and Chris stared back, but he wasn’t as practiced in lying as Josh was and there was a giveaway flush in his cheeks, a guilty sideways glance to his eyes.

The thing about their relationship was that it tended to be made up a lot of unsaid words. Some of them benign, harmless, and others less so. It was the questions Josh did not ask and the answers that Chris did not give. As such, despite the amount of secrets that Josh knew Chris was keeping, he’d never really perfected the art of deceit.

Josh always gave him an out, never pressed when Chris obviously did not want him to, and so Chris has never really learnt how to lie to him for it.

For a moment Josh stared at him and Chris stared stubbornly some place to Josh’s left. Then Josh sighed, exasperated and resigned because he stood about as much chance of getting information out of Chris that was not willingly given than he did of winning a personality award in the school yearbook.

“Alright,” he said. “A scratch. From a tree branch.” He wiggled his eyebrows at Chris, aiming for levity. “Maybe you need new glasses. _Again_.”

“Says the guy who thinks my glasses are cute,” Chris retorted, and he looked so grateful that it was honestly a little pathetic.

If he was planning on making a habit out of lying to him than he’d need to learn to get a better handle on himself or their whole friendship was going to wind up going painful fast.

Josh himself was a very proficient liar. He lied every day in little _I’m fine’s_ and _just tired’s_. He lied to himself about the reasons there were bags growing under his eyes, that the jumpy, staticy feeling in his head was something that he’d grow out of one of these days.

He lied to himself when he pretended that the only reason he craved Chris’s touch was because it was cold in Blackwood; when he pretended like he didn’t crave the warm weight of his hand when he was back home where the weather no longer demanded his touch.

“So,” Chris asked teasingly, “did you miss me?”

“Not a chance,” Josh said back, because that at least was the most obvious lie between them.

“Yeah,” Chris grinned and if Josh’s stomach flopped from it, it was only due to insufficient exposure recently. “I missed you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh gosh, thank you so much to the kind people who've messaged me about this, and to absolutely everybody who left a comment on the last chapter. It is no secret that the greatest way to motivate a writer is to give them feedback, and it's been so great to see a response to this weird little AU idea, and I sincerely hope that the next chapter didn't disappoint even though I know it's mostly build up at this point. 
> 
> If you ever have any (non spoilery) questions you can ask them over at Glenflower over at tumblr (or, alternatively here of course, but I am something dreadful at remembering to reply to comments.)


	3. Chapter 3

Highschool is the start of a lot of changes for Josh and he can’t figure out how he feels about any of them. He’s sure that being fourteen is meant to be confusing for everybody, or so the teachers tell them all, but he’s reasonably certain he’s taking it to the next extreme.

It’s not _all_ bad.

He and his sister get closer. The time his father spends at home dwindles to practically nothing – away, always, on one shoot or another, no time to remember he’s three young children and a desperately lonely wife. Their mother, who had tried once upon a time to be a hands-on parent but found it ill-suited to her talents, begins taking lavish, long vacations. With a house as big as it is empty and an age ripened maturity the Washington siblings rely on each other.

Although they’re a year too young to go to school with him now, Josh’s sisters take to spending time with his friends; _his_ friends quickly become _theirs_ and Josh can’t even begrudge them for it because he knows he’s not the best with words or the greatest at sharing but all he’s ever wanted in life is for the people he loves to be happy, and with the others Hannah and Beth are. Hannah comes out of her shell more, less afraid to speak her mind, and Beth finally has people to turn her fierce overprotectiveness to so her siblings don’t drown in it all.

The group too expands. First day of highschool Sam adopts them a feisty blonde named Jessica and a beauty called Emily and Mike pulls in a shy but kind jock named Matt. Josh likes them all the way he likes all of his friends – with genuine appreciation and adoration but a respectable amount of distance between them and the secrets he keeps.

Their table at lunch is never empty, his calendar never free of invitations, and Josh knows he shouldn’t be lonely, that there are kids at school who sit alone in corners and count the cracks in the ground to hide the tears in their eyes, that he has no _right_ to feel lonely – but he is.

It’s a feeling that’s been building inside of him for as long as he can remember. It eases somewhat when he’s with the group, abates even so it’s barely present when he’s with Chris, but it never leaves. It’s a monster that has sunk it’s claws in too deep and Josh can never stop feeling like he’s the odd one out, that people don’t like him as much as they pretend.

He gets paranoid. More than he’s ever been. Ideas lodge up in his head that don’t have any real basis in reality yet he can’t quite shake. His moods are all over the place. He shakes sometimes beneath the force of his thoughts, little tremors that grow and grow until they take his breath away.

(he’s careful though, so, so careful. Josh was an expert at hiding things, at secrets, and he keeps it all buried deep away where none of his friends can ever find it.)

But that’s just another part of being fourteen, the teachers say.

Josh knows better – but he pretends that he doesn’t.

.

While Josh is still too young to be left on Blackwood on his own, after years and years of hounding his mother finally gives in and relents a privilege Josh had been hanging out for ever since he’d first started spending time with Chris – the key to the guest cabin.

“I don’t know why you want it so bad,” she sighed as she pressed it into his palm with fingers that shook about the tips for an entirely different reason than Josh’s did, “but if you _must_.”

“Yeah,” Josh said, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense. As he went to draw his hand away his mother clutched it tightly.

“Be back before dark,” she said firmly.

“Yes mom.”

“And don’t make a mess.”

“Yes mom.”

“And for the love of god, don’t go wandering off.”

“ _Yes_ mom,” Josh said, more emphasis this time, and she gave a fond, exasperated look before releasing his hand.

“Go,” she said, “be free, child of mine.”

And Josh did, out the door in seconds and crunching his way through the snow with enough excitement that he could barely keep on his feet.

The cabin was a landmark for Josh. It was somewhere for he and Chris to go that wasn’t _snow_. While it was true that it was hardly frost covered year-round on the mountain, Josh had never been during a thaw. It was a winter mountain retreat, and his parents didn’t see any point holidaying there on the off seasons.

This had, of course, meant that Josh and Chris had spent a lot of their limited time together very cold and very wet. Josh was all but dying to see Chris somewhere that didn’t warrant six layers of insulation

Josh very intentionally did not think about how this excitement might have had something to do with seeing Chris out of his coats.

As he was hiking up a sharp turn in the path Josh’s foot slipped. Before he could even begin to fathom the idea of panicking there were warm hands at his back.

“Wow,” Chris marveled, “I know you’ve got a really bad sense of balance, but it seems like it just gets worse with time, bro.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Josh said truthfully, one hand on Chris’s arm as he allowed himself to be steadied. He flashed Chris a beaming grin. “I figure whenever I’m in danger you’re going to swoop in and save me.”

Chris raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t remove his hands entirely, letting them linger just over Josh’s shoulders like he expected him to fall again at any moment. “Are you saying you’re my damsel in distress?”

“I’m saying _you’ve_ got a hero complex,” Josh said, twisting a little so he could prod Josh in the chest with his finger. He was surprised by how firm he was, almost a little insulted actually, because Josh would be fifteen in two weeks and Chris was still only fourteen.

Chris rolled his eyes, and batted away Josh’s hand with a huff. “I do not. I can’t help it that you’re always putting yourself in danger.” He paused, squinting at Josh. “And I keep telling you not to go wandering off without me.”

“It’s my mountain,” Josh insisted, for what was basically the hundredth time in the course of their friendship. Chris opened his mouth, obviously intending to launch into what was his favourite response, but Josh talked over him. “ _And_ I’m not wandering off.” With a smug look, he unfurled his hand to show the shiny key nestled in the creases of his glove.

Chris frowned. “What’s –.” Realization hit. He looked at least as excited as Josh felt. “ _Dude_ , is that…?”

“The key to the guest lodge,” Josh confirmed with a grin so large it hurt a little. “My mother’s given me permission to use the guest lodge on my own.”

“Are you serious?” Chris asked, and his own grin was practically blinding.

“Very,” Josh said, clapping him heavily on the shoulder. “It only took me three years to get you home.”

Chris laughed loud and high in delight and Josh pretended, as he was so good at doing, that the reason he shivered was only the cold.

.

Though it was called the ‘guest cabin’ Josh couldn’t ever remember his family having guests within it. Certainly, there were family pictures here and there, books his parents had read once that had gone dust covered. Josh couldn’t remember the last time it’d been inhabited, and he could feel the isolation and age of it in the grit that coated the furniture.

“Dude,” Chris said in awe, walking forward so that his boots clunked heavily on the wooden floor, skirting fingers along bannisters and tables and chairs. “ _Wow_.”

Josh looked around. “Wow what?”

Chris paused, squinting at him. “ _Wow what_ , he says,” he muttered. “I sometimes forget you’re rich.”

Josh felt a flush in his cheeks. “It’s just a cabin.”

“Maybe to you,” Chris said, and it sounded like he intended to say more, but his attention was grabbed by something else and he wandered off all over again.

Josh watched him fondly. It didn’t smart, Chris picking at his wealth like that, not just because he knew it was true but because it was Chris. He’d known him long enough and well enough to understand that Chris did not come from a background that Josh would ever understand – part of him often doubted he’d _know_ it.

“You have a fireplace,” Chris shouted, and it echoed in the cabin. He was squatted before it, grabbing at the wood stacked beside it and shaking it free of mites and mess. He looked up excitedly at Josh, cheeks pink between the unusual warmth and his eagerness. “Can we?”

Josh grinned and went to join him, squatting down at his side. “That’s what it’s there for, isn’t it?”

Chris looked positively thrilled at the idea of setting something alight. Josh wasn’t entirely sure whether that pointed to cold or pyromania, but he stepped back and let him fill the fireplace full of wood and paper before sparking it to life with a match.

“That’s more like it,” Chris groaned, holding his hands to the ash-dusted screen and flexing his fingers. “I think at this rate I might even be able to feel my knuckles sometime tonight.”

“You’d think you’d never been warm a day in your life,” Josh joked as he spread his hands out besides Chris’s. They bumped together a little at the wrists and his face went warmer than the fire on his skin.

_Get it together_ , he warned himself. _Get it together, it’s just Chris._

“Well, you get to leave this place whenever you want,” Chris pointed out, “do you have any idea what it’s like to be here all the time? It’s cold, man. Not always, true, but when it’s cold, it’s _cold_.”

“You don’t have your own fireplace?”

Chris thought for a moment, rocking back and forth on his heels. “Sort of. I mean, dad’s usually got a barrel flaming at any given time.”

Josh stared at him, trying to figure out if he was joking or not, but Chris looked completely unbothered, sincere in that disinterested way people got when they didn’t quite realize they’d said something strange.

“A barrel,” Josh said, and then, “flaming,” and then, to test the way the sentence strung together, “at any given time?”

Instantly Chris turned to him, and his face flickered between realization, surprise and then sudden and complete blankness.

Chris did blankness like nobody else Josh had ever met. His face didn’t so much as shut down as it did light up, drowning out and all suspicions with a wide smile and crinkled eyes. It was in moments like this Josh realized how hard Chris tried to play at being clueless and dumb when he was nowhere near either.

“Well,” Chris said, voice cheerful in an unnatural way, “it’s a mountain, you know? Gotta take advantage of the privacy.”

_What privacy_ , Josh thought, and then he couldn’t stop thinking. _Why do you need privacy? Do you live here? Why do you live here? How do you live here? Where did you even come from, Chris? Why is it that you’re only ever here – alone, with me, where nobody else can find you?_

_Why does it feel somedays like you only exist for me?_

That last thought stuck in Josh’s mind, trapped between the paranoia and fear that had been making their homes up there for as long as he could remember. The older he got the less sure he was of anything, and Chris –

Well, Josh wasn’t ready to think about that yet.

“Josh?” Chris said, and Josh started back to reality suddenly. Chris was looking at him with narrowed, concerned eyes and a hand that rested on Josh’s shoulder. Josh stared at it. He hadn’t even realized Chris had touched him. And given how aware he was of Chris at any given moment that was no small feat. “Josh, you aright bro?”

“I – yeah.” Josh swallowed. He couldn’t stop staring. In this light with the windows curtained and only the open door and the fire for light Chris had a shadowed, unnatural look to him. A hollowness like a pencil sketch.

Chris frowned and he scooted closer, reaching for Josh’s face with both hands. His palms were fire-warm on Josh’s icy cheeks and he went completely still as Chris’s thumbs stroked along his skin. Outside was snow-muffled quiet but beside them the fire crackled loudly.

“You don’t look so good,” Chris murmured.

“I’m fine. I was just – thinking.” Josh gave him a weak smile.

“What could you possibly be thinking about that would have you looking like this?” Chris asked, and in the moment where Chris felt barely real Josh ached – he ached at his voice and the hands on his face and the doubt that was nesting in his mind.

_Nothing good,_ Josh thought as he stared at Chris, _Nothing good._

_._

On Josh’s sixteenth birthday Jess and Emily have the astoundingly brilliant idea to lock he and Sam in his room.

Their intentions were kind if misguided. People had been telling the both of them for almost half the duration of their friendship that they made a cute couple, that they really rounded each other out, that Josh was that much easier to talk to around Sam.

Josh had never taken it seriously; he hadn’t even thought to point out that he’d never really thought of Sam like that. For a while he thought he should, but romance wasn’t exactly an emotion that could be faked or forced. To him Sam was a third sister.

He tried not to focus on the fact that whenever he thought about something more than friendship, it only ever seemed to be one person that jumped to mind.

“So,” Sam said after the giggling from the other side of the door had faded away, “what do we do now?”

She was on Josh’s bed, lounging back on her hands and smiling nervously. There was amusement, though, in her eyes. She obviously found this whole thing as hilarious as Josh did.

Josh shrugged and sat down next to her. “I mean, we could probably yell a bunch but I don’t think that’d make a whole lot of difference.”

Sam sighed, picking at a loose thread on Josh’s pillow. “I don’t want to give them that satisfaction. I guess we’re just waiting them out.”

“Seems like it,” Josh agreed.

It went silent for a second. Not awkward but not quite comfortable. It was a ‘victim of circumstance’ sort of silent; it was difficult to be relaxed when they’d been herded behind a locked door like sheep, but their relationship was as old as it was strong and Josh doubted there was a situation on this earth that would make him and Sam uncomfortable with one another.

Sam sighed and brought her legs up, arms folded atop them and face rested on her bare wrists. What little was visible of her face was looking at Josh.

“What?” He asked, a little self-consciously.

“Did you want to try it?”

“Try what?”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. Kissing, I guess?”

Josh stared at her and she stared back, completely unbothered. “You’re serious?”

“Am I ever not?”

Josh thought about that. “Well,” he drawled, “I suppose you do have a rubbish sense of humour.”

Sam punched him in the shoulder for that, just a little too hard in that way she had of being completely unaware of her own strength. “Don’t be a jerk. Do you or don’t you?”

Josh thought about it for a moment. He loved Sam. He already knew he loved her. He’d tried even, however weakly and infrequently, to love her the way the others thought he should and that hadn’t worked out.

Still, it felt… _something_. It felt like the thing to do, something he owed both of them. A test maybe. A way to make sure.

“Alright,” he said and Sam’s eyebrows sky rocketed. “What, did you think I was going to say no?”

“A little,” Sam admitted.

“You don’t have to force yourself,” Josh reminded her and Sam, who never liked to be treated like she was made of glass, scoffed and reached for him.

It was as brief as it was chaste. Their lips pressed against one another awkwardly and it was painfully obviously that it was the first time for both of them.

“Maybe if you just...” Sam paused, huffed, and tilted her head at another angle.

It was still innocent, their lips just slotted together that little bit neater, but this one felt more like a proper kiss should, Josh thought.

When they pulled away Sam’s lips were a little wetter. Josh did not find that nearly as interesting as the movies told him he should.

“Well?” She asked.

Josh hesitated. “Please don’t take this the wrong way,” he said cautiously, “but, I’m actually pretty sure I’m gay.”

“Oh thank god,” Sam blurted. “Me too.”

 They stared at one another again and suddenly, without any warning at all, they both burst out laughing; so loud, in fact, that there was the thunder of footsteps outside and the door flew open.

“What? What?” Jess said. “What happened? Did you do it?”

Sam was in tears, her face buried in Josh’s shoulder, and Josh couldn’t find enough breath to get a single word out. It was just so hilarious suddenly, stupid and obvious, and in that moment Josh loved his friends so fiercely it burnt.

And there was a part of him that wished Chris was there to share it all.

.

That night Josh dreamed of the kiss.

In his dreams it went so much better, hands on hips or around shoulders, lips moving together sinuously, breath hot and skin tight.

Only it wasn’t Sam he was kissing – Josh didn’t even need to pull away to recognize the face beneath his fingertips.

“Josh,” Chris said, and Josh was filled with such sudden, intense _want_ that he woke up.

For a moment he laid in bed staring at his ceiling, sweating a little and breathing much too deeply. He was undeniably hard, and it wasn’t the first dream like this Josh had had in his life but it was the only one that had ever given him Chris.

Slowly, with shakes that chased up and down his arms, he buried his face in his hands.

_Oh fuck_ , he thought, miserable and guilty and ashamed.

_Oh fuck_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> //shows up months after starting this fic with only this to offer in my defense. 
> 
> (you may or may not have been able to tell I got sucked into Dragon Age hell for a while there, but I'm hopefully back to a happy, wholesome fandom balance now.) 
> 
> Also, there's a [playlist](https://8tracks.com/frcls/honest-affection) semi-inspired by this fic now! I can't possibly thank the person who created it enough!

**Author's Note:**

> I tried really hard not to write this, but eventually I sort of just gave in. Eventually I'll jump the rating to explicit and change the warning to include graphic depictions of violence. Pretty much all canon characters will be in here eventually, and I'll add them to the tags as they come.


End file.
